2011 Fantasy Football Player of the Year: Too Early Edition

Brandon Berg

Ray Rice – RB Baltimore Ravens

Ray Rice is going to be a beast this year. He has Vontae Leach clearing the way for him and Willis McGahee are gone. Lets remember that before those two transactions, Rice was already a top 5 RB or maybe just a tickle outside of that. Let’s also remember that Rice is also a PPR monster. Rice was already one of the RBs projected to have a top season. Add in the favorable components such as the leach signing and McGahee release and the upside is unmeasurable.

At the beginning of fantasy drafts and drafts in general, I always like to take the player with the highest upside and a reasonable amount of risk. When your first pick doesn’t perform well, fantasy teams generally don’t do well either. With Rice, you get as close to a guarantee of production as you can. He is guaranteed to get his carries and will catch plenty of balls out of the backfield. Barring any injury, Rice has an incredible upside that is too much to ignore as early as the first pick of the draft.

Caleb Parkinson

Aaron Rodgers – QB Green Bay Packers

Sure I would like to be more stylish with this pick, but I just simply cannot. Regardless of the Super Bowl MVP that Rodgers won in February, I feel that there is no surer thing in football right now than Mr. Aaron ‘Ace’ Rodgers. Last season he proved that he is a stud even when his offense is banged up. He played essentially the entire season without his starting running back and tight end. When Brandon Jackson was starting in the backfield, it was obvious what the Green Bay offense was going to do, and it still did not matter.

In 2008 his completion percentage was already a very respectable 63.6%, and it has gone up a full percentage point each year since. Over the past three seasons Rodgers has averaged 4131 passing yards, 28.7 passing TDs, 10.3 interceptions and 4.3 rushing TDs per season. Also in 2010 he lowered his fumbles from 10 in each of the two previous seasons to just four. Not bad for a guy who threw 475 times with 64 rushes. This year he is expected to see all his main starting weapons back and healthy. So my only question about Rodgers right now is just how high is this guys’ ceiling for 2011?

Tom Schriner

Darren McFadden – RB Oakland Raiders

I’m going out on a limb and saying Darren McFadden will end up the POY in 2011. In his almost first fully healthy season (missed 3 games in 2010), DMC showed off the skills that made him the 4th overall pick in ’08. He led the league with 14 runs of 20 yards or more, was top 10 in receptions by a RB, and scored 10 touchdowns. I saw an interesting article on ESPN that compared DMC to Jamal Charles and the per game played numbers stood out as almost equal. So if McFadden can keep his lingering injuries in check I think he finishes atop the RB heap! But we all know it’s a gamble.